But Ramogi Huma, president of
the National College Players Association, a group of 14,000 current and former Division I athletes
that advocates for many of the
same issues as Mr. Vaccaro, says
the aggressive rhetoric strikes exactly the right tone. The NCAA
“doesn’t respond to people asking nicely,” he says. “It responds
to force: lawsuits, new laws, public criticism through the media. I
think he’s doing exactly what he
needs to do if he’s going to inspire
change.

“Look who he’s talking to. He’stalking to the future lawyers. Heknows where the power lies.”es on sports law and has writtenabout the O’Bannon case, says Mr.Vaccaro’s willingness to push theissue of whether athletes shouldreceive compensation, even retro-actively, forces people inside andoutside intercollegiate athletics toconfront a concept many feel isthreatening.

To Mr. Vaccaro, however, the
quandary is almost purely one of
labor and compensation—with the
wrong people bene;ting from a distorted market.

“He really is trying to get at thequestions of what’s the appropriateinteraction of education, athleticcompetition, and kids—particu-larly kids who come from fairlytough backgrounds,” says Mr. Haa-gen, the law professor at Duke. “Ithink Sonny had this kind of intui-tive sense that a lot of the amateur-ism talk was not correct. … Whathe really understands is the begin-nings of an effort to try to get dol-lars to people who are producingvalue.”Mr. Vaccaro is more blunt: “Ithink we’ll have a revolution in fouror ;ve years. And if O’Bannon wins,it’ll come a lot quicker.”It’s not clear exactly what Mr.Vaccaro’s new world would looklike if he were to win this battle. Hedoes know that, for now, he’s on hisown.

Even the college coaches—thepeople he once spoke with ona daily basis, the men who senthandwritten letters thanking himfor the free gear—keep their dis-tance. These days, on the rare oc-casions that Mr. Vaccaro talkswith a coach, he often hears this:‘What are you doing now, Son-ny?’“‘What am I doing now?’” herepeats. “I laugh. I say, ‘I can’teven tell you. I’m still causingchaos.’”

A; ;;;;;; ;;; ‘R;;;;;;;;;’

If Sonny Vaccaro’s basketball ventures have met with criticism or outright resentment from
some, one thing they’ve never been
called is unsuccessful. The man
who keeps ;les on opponents and
friends alike has not thrown his
weight behind doomed causes. He
sees this as his moment, and he’s
in it to win.

The O’Bannon case has already
proceeded further in court than
most federal claims against the
NCAA typically do. In March the
judge denied the NCAA’s motion
to dismiss the lawsuit, and both
sides are now preparing for the discovery process. Mr. Vaccaro, who
served as a matchmaker between
Mr. O’Bannon and the high-powered law ;rm of Hausfeld LLP, is
involved in most of the meetings of
the legal team and attends all of the
court proceedings.

He believes that the case willshow a sports-loving public how theproverbial sausage is made in col-lege athletics. “If the public is ex-plained the gross injustices,” he says,“they’ll be on your side.”The case, which seeks class-ac-tion status, now has a dozen or sonamed plaintiffs. All were star ath-letes in their day, and many wonnational championships on theirrespective basketball and footballteams. Among them are four play-ers from the NCAA’s 1966 nationalbasketball title game, in which anall-black team from Texas West-ern College (now the University ofTexas at El Paso) upset an all-whiteteam from the University of Ken-tucky.

The debate over whether col-lege athletes should pro;t fromtheir playing time has dogged col-lege sports for years. The questionhas grown particularly chargedas football and basketball gener-ate ever more revenue for colleges,and as technology has opened upan array of commercial opportuni-ties using athletes’ likenesses. Mr.O’Bannon’s case in particular hasbrought more attention to a waiverthat athletes sign when acceptinga scholarship, which authorizesthe NCAA to use their names andpictures to promote NCAA events,giving up all future rights in theassociation’s licensing of those“images and likenesses.”Michael McCann, a professor atVermont Law School who focus-